Do you need to registrer to buy at auction?
What do you make the checks out to?
Just show up at the published time and place with cashier’s checks payable to yourself totaling the amount you want to bid and an ID. You should call Trustee ahead of time as 70-90% of sales are postpones or canceled. Often they won’t be postponed until you get there.
There is another player now active in Trustee Sales in CA … that being REDC, parent of Auction.com. REDC must comply with the respective state’s law (in CA Civil Code 2924) governing trustee sales. Auction.com does require that participants “register” on the day of the sale. This “registration” I believe is a version of the “qualification” process for all CA trustee sales, whereby any bidder must step forward and show identification and also show sufficient funds to cover at least the opening bid $ amount for the particular property up for auction.
Since trustee sales are a public event, and many prospective investors show up simply to observe (w/o bidding) the process (and learn by osmosis), I doubt Auction.com could bar an interested investor from attending one of their auctions without registering? But I have not tested that theory. Anyone been to an Auction.com trustee sale and care to share their experience? The good, bad, and ugly. Thx
John … re the second part of your question “who (how) do you make the checks payable?” … Unless you’re focusing solely on one specific property, it’s best to have the cashiers checks made payable to yourself. It’s easy to endorse the checks over to the trustee if you’re the successful (final) bidder. Alternatively, you can have the cashier checks made payable (ahead of time) to the trustee handling the sale of a particular property that you’ve targeted … but that’s generally not a good idea, as postponements are common, and you would be limiting yourself to buying only properties handled by that one trustee. Having the checks made payable to yourself gives you the most flexibility. Get multiple checks in various amounts (e.g. 200K, 100K, 75K, 50K, 25K, 10K, 10K, 5K, 2K, 2K, 2K, 2K, 1K, 1K). The last property I bought, I was able to tender the exact amount and as a result I got my TDUS (trustee’s deed upon sale) very quickly (5 days), as there was no need to send my file to a different dept. to cut me an overage (refund) check.
NOTE: Auction.com apparently uses only one entity for payment after a successful trustee sale bid (Auction.com LLC). After taking their cut, they then pay the trustee.